Sonia Baines
}} A misanthropic Vanian woman of enigmatic plans and intentions, seldom seen outside of Recraedes -- or, more rarely, New Dalven. Once close friends with Renault Agriam, and now a reluctant companion of the shapeshifter Reticent Shroud. Highly intelligent, apparently having some academic clout. Tales From the Flock spoilers follow. Description Sonia is, for lack of a better word, compact -- rising barely a few inches over five feet tall and light of build, appearing youthful well into her twenties. Her hair is a strange shade of soft, burnt red, a product of her nature as a silverbrow human: one long descended from some ancient draconic bloodline, especially graceful and elegant, marked by the stray silver hairs in her eyebrows. A jagged scar mars one side of her sharp, intense face, seeming to extend down her neck and beneath her collar. With her magical disguises dropped, however, Sonia Baines is a very different woman: a shade of the Plane of Shadow, twisted by its very essence. Unobscured, her skin is a uniform ashen grey and unnaturally smooth, her hair a deep black, and her frame is substantially thinner -- as though she were partially not -there-. Her eyes shift toward a pale, luminous blue, and the scar spreads across her cheek, neck, and shoulder like a rash. Even her clothing -- utilitarian mage's robes with a hooded cloak -- loses its color, as though light refused to behave for Sonia as it did for the rest of the world. History In her childhood, Sonia was undisputedly nothing short of a prodigy. Before the coming of the Flock, the young silverbrow was minorly famous among the Vanian intelligentsia, displaying an affinity for learning and knowledge that few her age could match, conquering history, psychology, business, philosophy, magic – there was no school of academia that she couldn’t dissect and make her own. By nature, she was a reclusive child, preferring books to people, her family often making a conscious effort to get her outdoors. Invariably, she would respond by taking a dauntingly thick-looking tome with her and finding a shadowy tree to sit and read under. At age 10, she argued her way into the student body of Stratham College, and at 14, she was a full research fellow and scholar. Unsatisfied with the secrets of Prime Material, she turned her attention to the planes, revitalizing the Interplanar Studies department with leaps and bounds of discovery; the so-called transitive planes – the Ethereal and the Shadow – were of special interest to her, and a pair of books in the school library penned by her are considered the definitive modern guides to both. Thought to be -too- young by some, Sonia was passed over for promotion to a teaching job when she came of age, instead kept in her research position – while bitter, she welcomed the opportunity to continue her studies, often going on extended jaunts in the Transitive Planes for research. By the time the first inklings of the cataclysms rumbled, Sonia was almost fully estranged from her family and friends, spending more time in the Plane of Shadow than the Material one, constructing a small, personal sanctum for herself there that she shared knowledge of with few, and entry to with fewer. Only one person was allowed true, unmitigated access – an Illumian summoner and fellow student of the College, Renault Agriam, whose friendship was by that point the sole honest interaction she could manage. She cut most other personal ties and bonds in favor of knowledge to the point of unhealthy isolationism, often sleeping in her shadowy sanctuary to avoid the concerned questions of her family. Sonia only became aware of the Flock almost a full two days after its arrival, oblivious to the war and chaos happening just outside her sanctum. She stepped back into the Material Plane to find the library shelves bare and the faculty and students alike long since gone, unaware of the raging conflict outside. The only thing there to greet her was Spook – Renault’s eidolon, the reason she approached the man in the first place, being an outsider from the Plane of Shadow. Frantically filling her in on only the sparsest of details, the panicked eidolon took her back into the transitive plane and began navigating toward the Flock, leading a confused Sonia close behind. The demonic forces, however, came for them both, the more magically inclined of their number using the Plane of Shadow for movement and cover. While the small, slippery Spook escaped, Sonia was easily subdued and taken prisoner, suffering a scarring wound to her shoulder, neck, and part of her face in the process – only escaping death by suffusing herself with the very shadowstuff that the Plane itself was composed of. In a desperate moment, she reached out and let the shadows become part of her, sealing her wounds and spreading through her body, changing her irrevocably into something not quite human. In exchange for her life, Sonia became a shade – a native denizen of the Plane of Shadow, her magical abilities lost save for a handful of shadowy powers, commanding the very darkness that had sheltered her. The advantage of the transformation, however, was too little, too late, and she was quickly brought to the demons’ mercy again even after a valiant last stand against the oncoming horde. Rather than kill her outright, her captors took the weakened and defeated Sonia back to the depths of Baator, where (despite her struggles) she was kept as little more than a plaything – made to repeatedly suffer torture at the hands of devils whose bloodthirst the battle on Martyrial could not fully sate. Ill at ease with such a fate, the nascent shade weathered the sadistic treatment as best she could manage, cobbling together an escape plan over the days (weeks? months?), using her newfound mastery of the transitive planes to slip back into Vanius unnoticed – where, joining up with a group of patrolling durahan and aosith on a final sweep for survivors, she fought her way back to the Flock and finally boarded. Adjusting to life on Custos, however, was more than difficult for Sonia. Traumatized by her ordeal in Baator and unwilling to rejoin the College without her magic, she became a recluse to an even more severe degree than before, taking up residence on the second floor of a Recraedan café and rarely venturing out for any purpose other than food or the library – even then, the former she often relied on the café for, and the latter she could pay couriers to retrieve books from, living off of the generous research stipends from Stratham College still in her bank account. With her altered appearance, rumors flew about the Black Mistress of Recraedes, and she took pains to cover her identity as a shade – when makeup proved too time-consuming given the complete nature of her transformation, she turned to less mundane means, using up much of her stipend to acquire a certain magic item. She almost never takes off the ring on a loop about her neck, now, reliant on its disguising illusions to put her at ease when she ventures outside. Now, with the advent of the Hackledown descent, Sonia has finally been coaxed out of her isolation to join a Vanian cell of Clades Diabolus – and to take her revenge on those who deserve it. Personality Studious and erudite to a fault, often committing social faux pas for no other reason than being distracted or fascinated with something unusual nearby -- an inattentiveness that most ascribe to flat-out rudeness (which, partially, it is). When something comes between her and a goal, she can often veer petty, vengeful, and passive-aggressive, unable to suffer fools well. Most interactions with her end up somehow academic or analytical, and she treats her friends more like colleagues, calling on their knowledge and resources for her never-ending studies. She doesn't make friends easily, stumbling over social interaction like an adolescent-- but those she comes to place her trust in are rarely forgotten. Because of her personal trauma, she shares the radical ideology of Clades Diabolus, settling for nothing less than the complete eradication of demonkind. Category:Tales From the Flock Category:Flock Category:Non-Player Characters